I shrugged and stood up. “If I come up dry, I’d like to circulate a description of him. You wouldn’t have any historic details, would you? Place of birth, parents, military service, anything like that? A photograph?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I can give you a description, though-he looks just like Ernest Hemingway as an old man.”
“White beard and fondness for turtlenecks?”
“The spitting image. If you copy Hemingway’s photo from The Old Man and the Sea, you’ll have Toby exactly.”
“What’s his real name?”
“That’s the only thing I do know. He’s quite proud of it, in his quiet way, although I may have been the only one he ever told. It’s Tobias A. Huntington.”
I stood in the middle of Spring Street, looking up at the lighted windows above a locked auto-repair shop, wondering where the front door was. As far as I could tell, the building was boxed in on both sides by its neighbors and was built almost flush against the hill behind it, in true Brattleboro fashion. I’d already checked out the narrow alley back there, as best I could in the gloom, and had found nothing aside from several decades’ worth of junk, piled up almost to the second floor.
I was about to resort to hurling pebbles against the windowpanes, like some latter-day Romeo, when I noticed not only that all the windows were open, but that someone’s shadow was moving about inside, which would have made my contemplated gesture appear considerably more hostile.
I fell back to a less subtle but less damaging approach. “Hello you in the second-floor apartment. Could you come to the window?”
The shadow paused, grew larger, and finally blocked one of the windows. Spring Street, being at best an aggravated alleyway, squeezed between the hill and the back of the looming Elliot Street Apartments, had no lighting to speak of, so the figure that addressed me remained a one-dimensional black void, for all the solidness of its voice.
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m a policeman. My name’s Gunther.”
The shadow didn’t respond.
“I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions.”
“Got a warrant?”
I couldn’t make up my mind on the sex of my quarry, since her, or his, voice hovered somewhere between both possibilities, as did the size of the shadow. “I’m just after some information, about someone you might know. Could I come up?”
“No.”
That stalled me for a moment, until I realized he or she wasn’t moving away from the window. The implication held some hope: I could still hold an interview of sorts, from the street. I glanced around. The street looked deserted.
I gave a mental shrug and cleared my throat. “I’m looking for Toby.”
“Don’t know him.”
Ah, I thought, I hadn’t followed the proper protocol. “Mother Gert sent me. Said he used to live here. You Melanie Durocher?”
There was a pause. “Yeah.”
“Seen Toby lately?”
“Not since he moved out.”
“When was that?”
“Soon as the weather got warmer.”
I smiled at that. “Do you know where he might be now?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Lived in a Dumpster once. Could be anywhere.”
The Dumpster had obviously made history in certain circles. Unfortunately, Melanie Durocher was right: Toby could be living anywhere, including, as Gert had suggested, out of town.
“Said he once had a room with a view.”
“What?” The comment had come after a moment’s contemplation and jarred oddly with my images of dumpsters and bridges. “Where?”
“Don’t know. Said it was real small, had a window on each wall, like a lighthouse.”
“He didn’t identify the building itself?”
“Nope. All he said was that it was hot shit when a storm came in.”
“But in Bratt, right?”
“I guess so.”
“Do you know how long ago this was?”
“Nope. I gotta go, okay?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but the shadow had already left. I stood there for a few seconds, enveloped by the gloom, hearing the town’s nocturnal hum all around me. I half wondered if I’d made the entire conversation up. I scratched my head and walked back to my car, hoping to find out what Sammie had dug up with her calls.
As I drove back toward the Municipal Building, I turned Melanie Durocher’s last words around in my mind, trying to match Toby’s cryptic description of his “room with a view” to some recognizable piece of architecture in town. Simple logic dictated certain givens: It was high up, for upcoming storms to be impressive; it was small; it had windows on all four walls.
I had stopped at the red light on the corner of High and Main streets, feeling like the one idiot in a game of charades, when I suddenly stuck my head out the car window, and looked straight up at the one place in town that fit Toby’s lair like a glove.
I pulled over in front of the Paramount and radioed Dispatch.
“What’s up?” Sammie asked, once she’d been brought to the radio.
“You had any luck?”
“Negative. You?”
“Maybe. Can you meet me at the Brooks House Main Street entrance right away?”
“Sure.”
I parked my car in a legal spot and got out, eyeing what I was increasingly sure was my goal. The Brooks House, built as an upscale red-brick hotel in 1871, as announced by a large bas-relief plaque on its wall, filled the southwest corner of the intersection like the bow of a masonry ocean liner. Its first floor was entirely made up of retail businesses, and the three floors above were residential, unremarkable in both price and appearance. But at the corner, on top of the illusory prow of the building, was a single, squatty, fifth-floor Victorian tower room.
Sammie Martens parked her car in front of Brown and Roberts Hardware and crossed the street to join me. “What are we looking at?”
“I hope it’s a lead.” I led the way to the entrance hall, checked out the names over the mailboxes, and pushed the button for the elevator. The manager’s apartment was on the third floor.
“You found Toby?”
“No, but I think I may have found one of his hideaways.”
We wandered down the dark hallway in search of the proper door. The Brooks was a high cut above where Milo had been festering, but it was still no home for the fainthearted. As with most American cities, large or small, the downtown dwellings, despite their convenience, didn’t cater to a high-class crowd.
I pounded on the door. There was a brief silence, followed by some shuffling footsteps and the turn of a lock. A young man, thin, narrow-chested, and sallow-faced, wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and a sour expression, pulled open the door.
“What?” It was less an inquiry than a challenge, making me aware not only that it was getting late for house calls, but that managers of low-rent buildings seemed, for the most part, to carry their burdens with remarkably little grace.
“Are you the manager?”
“Who wants to know?”
I pulled out my badge and made the introductions.
It had a remarkable effect. The young man’s face turned fuchsia. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. What is it with you people? The guy was a guest, all right? As far as I know, it is not against the law to have a guest in your house. He’s just a poor son of a bitch who wants to be left alone. Like I do.”
Sammie and I looked at one another and then back at the manager. I spoke first. “I think we’re missing something here. We just dropped by because we’re looking for someone.”
“Who?” The voice was no less hostile.
“His name’s Toby.”
Again he exploded. “Who the hell you think I been talking about? What did he do, anyway, rob a bank? I know nothing about it, all right? So get off my back.”